Artistic Research Does #7 - 'Tactics for Not Knowing' by Emma Cocker

This research exposition is conceived in conjunction with the publication, Artistic Research Does #7 (2023), which presents a translation of Emma Cocker’s essay ‘Tactics for Not Knowing: Preparing for the Unexpected’, originally published in Elizabeth Fisher and Rebecca Fortnum, (eds.) On Not Knowing: How Artists Think, (Black Dog Publishing, 2013). See https://i2ads.up.pt/publicacoes/artistic-research-does-7/ In addition to the translation and re-publication of the original text, the revised version of ‘Tactics for Not Knowing’ in Artistic Research Does #7 offers two further interventions in the form of annotations. In one column of margin notes, Cocker shares additional reflections, referring to some of her more recent artistic research projects and collaborations that continue to resonate with the concerns of the original text. In parallel, a second column of margin notes comprises the titles of additional pieces of contiguous writing drawn from two collections of Cocker’s writing, The Yes of the No (2016) and How Do You Do? (2023). Within this online version these margin notes include hyperlinks that enable the reader to access these different thought-fragments of writing. Artistic Research Does is edited by Catarina Almeida, André Alves. Artistic Research Does is published by i2ADS – Institute of Research in Art, Design and Society is a R&D unit based at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto (FBAUP), financed by the Portuguese agency Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).

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EMBODY KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is an oppressive tool of power once it is invested in like lumps of gold. Yet ways can be found to avoid its forms from becoming bankable, transferable. Knowledge can be concealed tacitly within the body, smuggled across borders. Having confidence in something is a matter of faith, of trust. Memorisation is the burning of an idea into the head and heart. Expert and amateur are bound by their love, for both obsessively surrender their attention to a single passion. Unlikely dissenters, both resist the liquid terms by which they are increasingly expected to conform. One rejects professionalism, whilst the other is a little too honed and focused, acutely specific. Localised knowledge fails to adapt or modify itself obediently to the societal demand for global forms of generic and malleable (non) skill, rather it strives to retain its awkward specificity, its strange and impenetrable dialect. Ideas become located at the fingertips or along one’s taste buds. Flesh refuses to be made dispensable, to give up its secrets easily. Other forms of knowledge are wilfully scattered or dispersed through a community, where various individuals are entrusted as keepers or protectors of a carefully chosen fragment, a single coordinate on a living map. Such strategies refuse to divulge the extent of their knowledge, but rather only ever indicate towards the collective potential.

From Emma Cocker, The Yes of the No, (Sheffield: Site Gallery, 2016), p. 15. Revised extract of a text that was previously published as a pamphlet entitled The Yes of the No, commissioned and published by Plan 9, Bristol as part of The Summer of Dissent (2009).

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